Commencement oratory ... must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm... opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one call...ing in which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence; all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever-new embodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost farthing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[T]he late Samuel McChord Crothers, genial wit and essayist, ... after listening to the speeches at a certain Harvard Commencement... remarked that he gathered that the world had been in great danger, but that all would now be well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One may decide that the nipple most nearly resembles a newly ripened raspberry (never, be it noted, the plonk of water on a pond a...t the commencement of a drizzle, a simple bladder nozzle built on the suction principal gum bubble, mole, or birth ward, bumpy metal button, or the painful red eruption of a swelling), but does one care to see his breakfast fruit as a sweetened milky bowl of snipped nips? no.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
After that came commencement day--that great day for which all other days were made. And it went. And that night I felt of myself ...all over, and to my astonishment, I found 'twas the same old Rud. Not a single cubit added to my stature; not a hair's breadth to my girth. If anything, on the contrary, I felt more lank and gaunt than common, much as if a load were off my stomach.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is always easy enough to take up arms, but very difficult to lay them down; the commencement and the termination of war are not... necessarily in the same hands; even a coward may begin, but the end comes only when the victors are willing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... two great areas of deafness existed in the South: White Southerners had no ears to hear that which threatened their Dream. And... colored Southerners had none to hear that which could reduce their anger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even--if you will--eccentricity. ...That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us may realize who live in countries where freedom of... expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »